The problem lies in a lot of places. First of all, Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan have zero chemistry together, and the script called for them to have this long history, this Riggs and Murtaugh-esque undying love and devotion for each other, and it just wasn't there. Secondly, there is such a thing as too much Tracy Morgan. I love the guy, I love 30 Rock, and God knows I love Fat Bitch almost as much as I love Fat Bitch 2, but 110 minutes (!) of unleashed Tracy Morgan is a lot of Tracy Morgan. Too much, I'd say.

And the movie could have been elevated to something watchable with decent action sequences, but Kevin Smith doesn't seem to know how to do those. They looked ridiculously amateur, and after movies like Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder married comedy and great action, people expect fight scenes and car chases in these things, especially in a damn Bruce Willis movie, to look better than the two-cent ones in fricking Human Target. The "R" rating did allow for especially loud gunshots, though. I like loud gunshots in movies. So that's one upside.

Then there's the script. Helmed by Las Vegas (yes, the Josh Duhamel show) scribes Robb and Mark Cullen, the movie relies on a lot of childish humor (for example: Seann William Scott's parkour-obsessed character likes to repeat what people say to drive them crazy -- in many, many scenes) and a pretty flimsy premise (which, again, wouldn't have mattered much if the rest of the ingredients were there), but the real disappointment is in how lousy a satire it was. Kevin Smith has been talking about this movie like it was going to be a post-graduate film studies thesis on the last 40 years of interracial buddy cop movies from In the Heat of the Night to 48 Hours on up to the likes of Die Hard with a Vengeance and even Rush Hour 3. And you know what it was? A really bad, near two-hour SNL sketch, with only a Beverly Hills Cop-alike score to keep it afloat.

It's really so, so bad. It's not funny, it's not even mindlessly enjoyable, and it sure as hell doesn't have anything to say. You're better off taping a Who Dat Ninja? poster to half of your TV screen while you watch Die Hard. At least that'll save you the twelve bucks of admission.

Did you see Cop Out? What did you think about it?